Wednesday 5 June 2013

Changing attitudes and changing strategy - Sheela Patel

R&R projects in which the vulnerable and unsure slum dwellers get a place to stay when infrastructure projects are taken up is good commons sense. NSDF and MM, who have organized slum dwellers in these situations, have worked hard to demonstrate its good governance for the city to invest in rehabilitation when taking up infrastructure projects.

For many years the announcement of such projects meant that the “market” would swoop down on the households who were entitled to such homes and buy over the houses at distress rates, thus benefiting from the projects.

Since the state and city didn’t intervene, there was no coordination between locational solutions and relocation options; often households had to move far away from their previous locations.

In many instances (in R&R), water access to sewerage and transport was not available before households moved in; schools and health centers were not near the relocation site; and changes in ration cards, access to kerosene nearby were not available for almost a year. Now exploring net based data strategy is to attempt to make these processes reviewable by senior administrators.

However at the end of the day all this is effective when communities are involved in making choices from the beginning and amongst the community members it is women who make these choices.


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